Happy Birthday
by EricaBennet
Summary: Mickey and Fiona go to visit Ian for his birthday. Warning: Lots sadness, character death, ect. My goal is to make you sob.


Happy Birthday

Mickey walked up to the Gallagher front door and raised his hand to knock, but opened it instead. The Gallaghers had never really been ones to lock their doors, even in a shitty neighborhood. Fiona was inside, working on putting together a crib. She looked up at him and smiled.

"Hey, Mick," she said.

"Hey." Mickey said.

"Just get off work?" She asked.

"Just left class actually," He replied.

Fiona stood up, dusting the thighs of her jeans.

"How's that goin' for you?" She asked.

Mickey shrugged, pretending not to care about it. Truth be told, he was proud of himself. Never in a million years had he pictured himself in community college two nights a week.

"It'll help me get a better job at the plant," he said. "Make more money, right?"

Fiona nodded, laughing. "I hear that."

She went off to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Mickey followed her.

"So I was thinkin' of going to see him today," he said, pretending to be interested in a random school paper of Liam's he found on the kitchen table.

Fiona didn't look at him this time, and he could see her grip the handle of the coffee pot. Mickey wondered if it would have been better to just go alone. Oh well, his toes were already in the water-might as well jump in.

"Wanna come?" He asked.

Fiona stared down at the countertop, nodding.

"His birthday," she muttered under her breath. "Fuck. How could I forget?"

She went to the fridge to check the sticky-note calendar system just to see if maybe she hadn't really forgotten. She flipped a few stick notes over to see if anything was written on the backside.

"It's easy to forget," Mickey lied. "Fuck. We're busy."

"Yeah." She turned to him suddenly. "I want to go."

"Any of the kids here?" He asked.

She shook her head. "They're with Sheila until tomorrow morning."

She grabbed her keys and her coat and waited for Mickey impatiently by the front door. When they were outside, she locked the door and followed Mickey to his beat up car. Once they were inside, seatbelts clicked into place, Fiona looked at him.

"I'm so sorry I forgot," she said, her voice thick with guilt.

Mickey dismissed the idea with the wave of his hand and started the car.

It was cold out, turning dark by five in the afternoon, so they had to hurry, shivering as they made their way through the grass making light conversation about work and kids and where to buy the cheapest pot in town. Their chatter instinctively died down as they got closer, and they stopped in their tracks almost simultaneously.

Fiona wiped at her eyes and squatted down, placing the freshly purchased flowers from the grocery store onto the plot.

"Hey," she said softly, as if trying not to disturb a sleeping baby.

She fingered some of the flowers that had been put there recently, most likely by Lip or Debbie or Carl. Maybe even Frank. She'd seen him there a few times, his hat off, his head down, for once not babbling on about his woes.

"I hate seeing the flowers like this in the winter," she said, pulling a brittle petal from one of them.

Mickey said nothing. He just stood a foot or two behind her, rocking back and forth in the cold. Unlike the Gallaghers, he had not been here since the funeral. The funeral almost two years ago.

"Happy birthday," Fiona said, tears rolling down her cheeks. She didn't bother to wipe them.

She stood up and nodded at Mickey, but grew a confused look on her face when he didn't budge. He wiped at his nose and then held the car keys out to her.

"You, uh, wanna go warm up? I'll be right behind you," he said, and she understood exactly what that meant.

Nodding, she took the keys and walked away. Mickey watched her, waiting until she was out of sight, and then he sat down beside the plot, the wind whipping at him from all directions.

"Hey, Kiddo," he said, surprised at how natural it came to talk to someone who wasn't really there. His voice caught in his throat. "You just had to be born in the coldest fucking time of year."

He blinked back some tears. He was tired of crying. He was tired period. Waking up every day was an effort when he had to wake up alone.

"I brought you something." He retrieved a can of beer from the inside of his jacket and then pulled out his pocket knife. With one swift motion, he stabbed a hole in it and began drinking from the hole. He only did this for a few seconds before letting the rest run onto the cold grass and dirt beneath him.

"Shot gun," he said softly, smiling a little.

He talked about his job, the classes he'd started, Mandy, Lip, Carl, Debbie, Liam, action movies. Everything they used to talk about. He hated to admit it, but it actually made him feel better to talk to him.

"You know," he said with a sigh, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Some fucking control he had. "The day you...when I read your note, I was fucking pissed, Man. All that shit about being a burden on me."

He laid on his side, the smell of grass and earth strong so close to his face.

"You were never a burden on me," he said with a long, shuddering sigh. "You brought out something in me that even I didn't know was there, you know? Fucking Mickey Milkovich could actually be somebody. Care about somebody. You were the strong one, not me."

The tears flowed freely now, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds to succumb to all of the feelings he suddenly felt. They weren't coming in spurts like they usually did. Sadness when the apartment was super quiet-nobody coming home from work and cabinets opening and closing, showers starting, gargling from teeth brushing. Happiness when he thought of something stupid one of them said to each other making the other spit out their drink laughing. Anger when he woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, realizing it was all _his_ fault for leaving him alone.

The feelings were all coming in full force now, flooding him, and he wasn't sure if he loved it or hated it.

"I love you, Ian," he said quietly, no longer bothering to wipe away tears. "Fuck. I wish I could go back and-" he cut himself off. He was about to say not waste time fighting over stupid shit, but that wasn't right. Part of what made their togetherness real was the fighting. It proved they could weather the worst of each other.

"I wish I could go back and call into work the day you decided everything had gone to shit and I wasn't there to take that fucking box cutter out of your hand," he settled on. He would give anything to go back then.

After that he just laid there listening to the wind and traffic in the distance. It seemed like hours even though in reality it was only seventeen minutes. He finally got up off the ground, dusting himself off and made his way back to the car. Fiona's eyes were red from crying.

"How could I forget my own brother's birthday?" She asked in a shaky voice. "The brother I don't have anymore."

Mickey patted her leg. Fiona then noticed that he'd been crying too. She stared at him. He tried to shrgu off her staring.

"It wasn't your fault," she said. "It wasn't anybody's fault, Mickey. Ian was sick. He was-"

"I know that!" Mickey snapped and took a breath. "Sorry. I know-"

"It's okay." Fiona let out a breathy laugh. "I do the same thing. It doesn't help to hear that, I know."

Mickey started the car, but didn't go anywhere. After several seconds, he turned off the engine off again.

"I was going to ask Ian to marry me that Saturday," he said suddenly.

Fiona's eyes widened. "Marry...?"

Mickey nodded, eyebrows raised high. "Yeah."

He laughed a little too.

"I had everything planned out too. He'd been whining about chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream all week but he couldn't have any because he was convinced the pills made him gain eight pounds. I was gonna buy the fucking ice cream and surprise him after goin' on a run with him around the track because I never fucking run anywhere unless some fucker's chasin' me. I thought with the run maybe it'd spark up some romantic shit on the way home and then I'd rip out the ice cream and convince him to eat it and then when he started to bitch about how it was gonna make him fat now I'd pull out the ring and tell him to shut the hell up."

Fiona kept staring at him, then to Mickey' surprise, she burst out laughing. Amusement was not was he expected. He frowned.

"What?" He demanded. "I thought it was a pretty fucking good idea."

"It was," She said, crying as she laughed, shaking her head. "That's what made you two so perfect."

She wiped at her eyes and said, still half sobbing, half laughing, "Ian would've loved that. He would have."

"Do you think if I'd proposed sooner...maybe even just a day earlier..." Mickey faltered, the deepest, darkest parts of Ian's suicide tumbling out of his mouth.

"No." Fiona shook her head. "Mickey, it's a disease. Ian's logic went out the window. Even if you'd gotten married, somewhere down the road, you would've gotten the call. Lucky you didn't have kids yet, right?"

Mickey felt that same dark part of him not caring about whether kids would have been involved or not. He would've taken even a minute more to have Ian longer.

"Right," he lied.

He started the car again and headed back toward the Gallagher house. He hung around for dinner and had a good time with the rest of the family-even Lip, who somehow after Ian's death had become less obnoxious and the two were almost friends.

When he returned to his apartment that night-the apartment he and Ian had barely started living in when he got the call that Ian had slit his wrists in the bathroom, he turned on the television for background noise and took out his laptop to get started on homework for his class, part of it being online. After a while, he went to the bathroom and just stood there. He often did that, just wondering what Ian had been thinking as he stood over the sink, veins open. Was he crying? Did he regret it and try to call for help but was too woozy from blood loss? He'd tried to call Mickey at some point in that time frame, but Mickey had been at work. Did he drift off into peaceful unconsciousness finally free of the sickness that consumed him or was he knocked unconscious hitting his head on the floor?

All of these thoughts did and would forever haunt Mickey. He sat down on the floor and had himself another good cry, a sliver of comfort in the fact that he'd got to know Ian Gallagher at all, and had been important enough to try and reach in his final moments of life.


End file.
